We haven't had an active political topic in this forum for a long time now, which somewhat surprises me since silly season for the next US presidential election seems to have got started early this time. In a public-spirited attempt to remedy this situation. I hereby offer the above topic.

It appears that there is an, er, unwillingness in, um, certain quarters to accept the decision by a Texas judge not to order an autopsy on the recently deceased US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. This despite the fact that the man's body was found in bed with zero (known) signs of foul play; that he was a 79-year-old male in a country where the average male life span is not far short of that (and deplorably far below male life spans in many developed countries); that he'd had chronic health issues, including hypertension that was surely not relieved by the stress of his job; and particularly, that his own family was quite emphatic in not wanting, let alone demanding, an autopsy.

Now I can accept that for ANY death of a major political figure, there is a tinfoil-hat contingent that will see a conspiracy behind it. That's just part of the shtick, and for that matter, I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to join the tinfoil-hat crowd and find conspiracies behind the fairly recent deaths of my mother-in-law (a minor celebrity of sorts) and even my own mother, I could probably do it, never mind that I knew vastly more about those deaths than I ever wanted to know about one. Again, that's the thing about conspiracy theories: anybody can play, never mind the facts.

But what to make of the fact that a certain US presidential candidate -- I don't need to say which one, do I? -- is at least on board with some of the TFH commentators? Does this look as embarrassing beyond our own borders as it seems to me? I realize that other countries have their own TFH factions, and who knows, maybe they've had politicos with legitimate shots at the highest national office who have pandered to those factions. But I have to say I have never seen anything quite like this in our own political process -- and I've been around long enough that that's saying something.